A Mother’s Pain

Do you ever wonder what a mother's pain is?
A mother can stand as strong as a tree
Providing shelter, even down to the little bees
Throughout each season she loses her leaves
Which represents the time and tears she'd spend on her knees
A mother can be as beautiful as a rose
And still be there to wipe her child's runny nose
She shows her thorns to warn off predators
And raises her child to a life she knows is better
But what is a mother's pain? Oh I know
A mother's pain is as plain as you can see
It's the love she shares for both you and me.

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Editor’s Note

The number one question our editors receive is—what do the editors and judges look for when judging the contest? The number one answer we give is creativity. Unlike prose, writing composed in everyday language, poetry is considered a creative art and requires a different type of effort and a certain level of depth. Of the thousands of poems entered in each contest, the ones that catch our judges’ eyes are the ones that remove us, even just slightly, from the scope of everyday life by using language that is interesting, specific, vivid, obscure, compelling, figurative, and so on. Oftentimes, poems are pulled aside for a second look based simply on certain words that intrigued the reader. So first and foremost, be sure your poetry is written using creative language. Take general ideas and make them personal. In his infamous book De/Compositions: 101 Good Poems Gone Wrong, W. D. Snodgrass imparts, “We cannot honestly discuss or represent our lives, any more than our poems, without using ideational language.”